Petrino to Falcons: “Psych! I’m staying with you!”

ATLANTA, GA — Bobby Petrino strolled into the Atlanta Falcons locker room Wednesday morning, walked directly over to DeAngelo Hall, and had a brief staredown.

Then he grabbed the Pro Bowl cornerback, threw him in a headlock, and gave him a noogie. He then proceeded to dance around the room.

“Gotcha’, fools!” Petrino shouted. “Gotcha’ soooo bad!”

The “Gotcha’” to which Petrino refers is what has turned out to be an elaborate hoax, in which he announced his shocking resignation from the Atlanta Falcons yesterday afternoon and was in Fayetteville, Ark. by the evening to hold a press conference as the new coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks.

“I had no idea that this would work so well,” Petrino said. “But these people here in Atlanta are really goofy. I mean, ‘Hey, Atlanta, gullible is written on the ceiling! Made you look!’ That’s what it’s like.”

Petrino said his goal all along was simply to shake things up a little bit with his team, but that things really took off and spiraled out of control. “We were gonna do it as an episode of Punk’d, to get DeAngelo … but it just got so big so fast,” Petrino said. “It’s almost like everyone here was half expecting me to do something like that, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Weird.”

For his part, DeAngelo Hall was stunned with the news.

“Honestly, man, I have no idea what to think anymore,” he said. “Is he our coach? Is he not our coach? Do I hate him? Do I love him? Is the whole world just a speck on the fingernail of an ant from another universe? I’m not sure that last one will ever be answered to my satisfaction.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!